The present invention relates to an electronic document processing system such as a system for generating document structures of electronic documents processed by word processors, work stations having document processing functions, and the like. More particularly, the invention relates to a system for automatically generating document structures of a new electronic document from or on the basis of the document structure of at least one already existing electronic document.
A known system for generating document structures of new electronic documents based on already existing or old electronic documents has been proposed. There has been proposed a document structure generation system which handles forms as the documents to be processed in a paper written by Yamada, entitled "An Approach to Automatical Forms Processing Systems" on page 2571 in the collected papers in the 35th National Convention of Data Processing Academy, and a paper written by Asami and Yamada, entitled "A Proposal on Forms Processing User Interface" on page 2571 in the collected papers in the 36th National Convention of Data Processing Academy.
In the forms, items to be entered and the format of data to be entered into the items are predetermined, and, thus, the data structure of the forms can easily be defined. Accordingly, the automatic processing for the forms can be readily accomplished by defining a data structure of the forms, preparing a program for automatically generating new forms from old forms, and executing the program to process the input data of the forms.
With regard to general-purpose electronic documents such as technical papers, manuals and specifications, except such a document as a form in which the items and the format of the data to be writted to the items are predetermined, there has not yet been developed means to define the data structure for those general-purpose electronic documents. This results in making it difficult to realize the automatic processing of the general-purpose electronic documents.
Recently, as described in a paper entitled "Concepts and Models for Structured Documents" by Furuta, R. in Cambridge University Press, pp 7-38 (1988), an electronic document is considered as being composed of a set of document-parts. Structually, the electronic document may be expressed by a logical structure and/or a layout structure. The logical structure represents logical relationships among the parts of document. The layout structure represents relationships among the document-part on the basis of the physical layout. The approach may relatively readily express the data structure of the electronic document.
The document with the above-described document structure is called as a structured document.
The ODA (Office Document Architecture) as an international standard specifying the concepts of the structured documents, requires the electronic document to have a specific logical structure representative of relationships among the document-parts and a specific layout structure representative of relationships among the document-parts as described in ISO/IS 8613, Information Processing--Text and Office System--Office Document Architecture (ODA) and Interchange Format (1988).
The ODA also prescribes a generic structure (consisting of a generic logical structure and a generic layout structure) which restricts possible structures of a specific logical structure and a specific layout structure.
The documents of the same type have the same generic structure. For example, all the patent specifications have a same generic structure, and all the technical manuals have also a same generic structure.
The ODA document is generated with reference to a structural mode of the generic structure.
The electronic document processing techniques, which are for the edit processing and the automatic layout processing of electronic documents according to the ODA rules, have been proposed in the following papers:
1) Paper written by Ishida and Murata, entitled "A prototype of ODA Documents Processing System (1)--Subject of Design--" on page 1853 in the collected papers in the 37th National Convention of Data Processing Academy,
2) Paper written by Suzuki, Nakatsuyama, and Murata, entitled "A prototype of an ODA Document Processing System (2) --input and imaging processes--" on page 1855 in the collected papers in the 37th National Convention of Data Processing Academy, and
3) Paper written by Hayashi, Saito, Ishida, and Murata, entitled "A prototype of an ODA Document Processing System (3) --Layout Processing--" on page 1857 in the collected papers in the 37th National Convention of Data Processing Academy.
Most of the document processing works in offices have the following features:
(1) The logical structures of the documents are explicitly or implicitly prescribed in the company, and most of the documents perfectly or partially satisfy the requirements for the prescribed logical structures.
(2) Relationships based on the logical structure exist among documents. (For example, the title of a document is of the same as an item in another document).
A part or the whole of a document is periodically or intermittently generated many times, or a number of parts of a document or a number of documents are generated once.
The document processing, except forms processings, for example, is performed through an interactive edit by an operator.
In this case, the following features may be pointed out:
(1) Similar interactive edit works are periodically or intermittently applied to a number of documents of the same type many times or much edit work is applied one time.
(2) Most document processing work is accomplished based on already existing documents.
The document processing as just mentioned involves the problems of redundancy and inefficiency arising from the interactive edit by an operator.
The documents with the fixed document structure, such as tables and forms, can be completed by the prior art in a manner that the correspondence is set up between the content of a document and that of another document, and the new document is generated on the basis of the correspondence.
In technical literatures, manuals, reports, and the like, a general framework is applied to the documents, but no restriction is placed in determining the detailed structure.
The logical structures of those documents cannot be represented until the structured documents according to the ODA are presented.
However, the logical structures which have been prescribed according to the ODA, only restricts possible structures before the generation of documents. Accordingly, it is disadvantageous in that it is impossible to determine the document contents and the number of contents before the generation of the document, the logical structure of which is determined when generating the document, resulting in making it impossible to accomplish automatic processing by way of automatically processing as done for forms in view of the correspondence among the document parts.